


And Then They'll Kiss Until They Die Kissing

by th_esaurus



Category: Actor RPF, The Hunger Games RPF
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-24
Updated: 2012-03-24
Packaged: 2017-11-02 11:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s like, Josh knows that Jen and Liam are doing it. Or have done it. Or at least, on one or some or many occasions, hit third base.</p><p>He’d like to get to third base with Jennifer. And maybe base one and a half with Liam.</p><p>He doesn’t really know the rules of baseball.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Then They'll Kiss Until They Die Kissing

Jennifer takes them both shopping before the press tour and coerces Josh into buying a suit that makes him look like a turd. A hero with turd-based superpowers, are her exact words, which leads to a string of toilet humour jibes and wink wink, nudge nudges. Liam is having his inseam measured because he’s an antipodean deity, too tall for real human clothes. He keeps looking over at the two of them. Josh pings him a brick-shaped grin whenever their eyes meet.

Liam’s fond smile sidles over to Jen every time.

*

Liam has gone out to dinner with Chris (“The Australians have gone down under,” Jen announces, with euphemistic gravity), so Josh and Jennifer order meat feast pizzas and slob out on her hotel suite bed. They’re watching _Hannah Montana_ repeats on ABC Family; Josh laughs without irony at the jokes.

“He likes you,” Jen says suddenly, not waiting to finish her mouthful of pepperoni before she airs her thoughts. “Mr. Miley. He told me.”

“Wait, Billy Ray Cyrus told you he likes me?”

“Butt off,” Jen scoffs, batting at him. She cuddles up to Josh, and her neck smells like perfume and her breath like bacon. She’s dolled up and dressed down, pyjamas and day-worn eyeliner, and little flecks of mascara above her eyelids like exclamation points. Josh knows he gets lyrical about her sometimes. She finds it adorable. “I’m serious. He thinks you’re a dweeb.”

Josh rolls over so the TV is upside down and Jen’s face is at the best angle for kissing. You know, if she wanted to. “What an honour,” he says, in his best dark-horse Oscar-winner tone. “I’m speechless, this is just—wow, wow, Jen, I feel so overwhelmed—“

“It’s what he calls me,” Jen shrugs, her big eyes as open and unreadable as the universe.

Then she stuffs pizza and her fists into Josh’s mouth until he’s spitting passata and swearwords, and the two of them are locked into giggles for the rest of the night.

*

It’s kinda weird when Josh and Liam do promo by themselves, because they did a table read, and a week of shooting in the corrugated iron and barbed wire of District Twelve, and then Jennifer became their only tether, too much a distraction in herself to let Josh worry about the boy on the other side. 

Josh had been told throughout his formative years – though by castmates rather than school buds – that he was intensely likeable. Just easy to get along with. His pen is perpetually poised over the blank lines of people’s good books. So it’s stupid and alien and frustrating to him that he should have to put effort into being friends with Liam. Maybe that’s why he wants it so much.

He doesn’t think Liam uses dweeb as a compliment.

So Josh is aggressively charming on camera, and Liam mostly relies on his face, and every time Josh makes a quip he’s proud of, he wishes he could turn to the side and prove his wit to just Liam, instead of an audience of thousands.

*

It’s Jennifer’s suggestion, of course, that they hit up the bars after their London premiere. She has a song she entitles _It’s Totally Legal For Josh To Get Cirrhosis Of The Liver In This Country_ , which is not exactly pithy but is accompanied by a dance involving duck-faces and wine bottle maracas, so. 

Josh spends forty minutes deciding on a suit, and still isn’t sure who he’s trying to impress with it. Jen bores of her sole company easily, and barges into his room armed with a make-up bag and three choices of shoe, commandeering his desk and mirror. He perches on her lap and pretends to dab at his eyes and mouth before she tells him he’s an asswipe, shoves him off.

She looks him up and down, his suede loafers and three-button waistcoat. “Well, aren’t you just pretty as a pin?” she comments airily, pleased and Southern. Josh glows and vogues boyishly. He’s got his ass jutted out and a hand on his hip and a gurn on his face that could win championships, and that’s how Liam catches him when he comes in. Jen slaps Josh’s stomach backhand, and all his pleasant bravado wheezes out of him in a burp-like rush of air.

He gets this sense that Liam doesn’t like to look at him properly, and has only ever seen his bare peripherals. 

They drink neon cocktails and lukewarm Fosters until three in the morning, the sort of time Josh treats like a long-lost friend he never really liked. Jen discards her heels around midnight and dances barefoot in the sludge of sweat and bodies like a kid tramping in the mud. She seems flightily young, less mature than her twenty-one years; but Josh has seen the weight of another life settle heavy behind her bright eyes, and he doesn’t understand how she does it. How she is so completely herself. He loves her, but he doesn’t entirely get her.

Liam is watching Josh watching Jennifer. He drinks his lager in big, manly gulps. “Why don’t you go dance with her?” he says, nodding. He’s not loud, and it’s heaving in the bar, but Josh hears his increasingly-familiar voice sharp and clear.

“She’s got a boyfriend,” Josh says incredulously, laughing just because he wants Liam to find everything he says funny.

Liam shrugs, and takes his gaze away again. “Never stopped us,” he says, and the brief light of their conversation flicks off.

*

It’s like, Josh knows that Jen and Liam are doing it. Or have done it. Or at least, on one or some or many occasions, hit third base.

He’d like to get to third base with Jennifer. And maybe base one and a half with Liam.

He doesn’t really know the rules of baseball.

*

Jennifer invites Josh over for a baking day, which sounds like a team activity but mostly involves Josh baking and Jen eating. Josh’s fingertips are patchy pink from the dye for his red velvet cupcakes, and Jen is stirring absent-mindedly, taking big licks of the spoon every now and then, and just dunking it straight back into the batter. Josh wonders if his fingers are the same colour as her tongue, and then feels a little gross about that.

Liam’s due to join them later. It’s hardly ever just the three of them, always a crowd and camera and microphone to remind them of the wider world. Jennifer’s parents are vacationing and her brothers left that morning, as Josh drove up. He’d caught them shooting smooching noises and puckered up lips as Jen waved them off irritably from the doorway. He’d propped his bike up against the redbrick and slats and thought about kissing her cheek in greeting, but thought they might still be loitering.

Jen calls her brothers little dipshits. Douchebaggery is a side-effect of big brotherhood, she says. Josh suspects it’s not universal.

It’s warm in the house, no air con but wide-flung patio doors and wood-silled windows propped open with herb planters. The kitchen smells of natural chemistry, syrupy sugar and that faint chargrilled smell of a well-used and not often cleaned oven. Josh is wearing Jen’s mother’s Martha Stewart apron; Jen is wearing inappropriately short shorts.

There’s no sense of urgency either of them, stirring frosting by hand and taking rest stops every other minute, but nevertheless, Josh feels it important to acknowledge some things while they have a moment to themselves. “Do you think--?” he starts, and then stops.

“Not that often,” Jen admits, smiling brightly.

“Do you think we could—kiss sometimes?” Josh asks. “Would Liam mind that?” Maybe he means to ask if her boyfriend would mind that. Maybe not.

Jen grabs a cupcake off the cooling rack, juggling it between her palms like a hot potato before eating it in three bites flat. She flicks crumbs from her palm at Josh’s ears, aiming with one eye shut. “He won’t give two craps as long as he gets in on it,” she says easily.

“Oh. Right,” Josh replies dumbly. He lets himself stare at Jen’s rubicund lips for a moment.

They have a food fight and don’t kiss just yet and make Liam help them clean up when he arrives. He calls them children. They let him have the two surviving cupcakes.

*

And then it’s out east, premieres in Hong Kong, New Zealand and Japan, where they’re made to go on an incomprehensible game show that Jen wants to live on forever. Their hotel out here is crisp and metallic, and their rooms aren’t next door to each other. Josh is starting to feel the sort of tired where all he can eat is microwave meals and whatever’s at the top of his suitcase is gonna have to do for the day.

He’s channel surfing in his pyjamas when there’s a knock at the door. Jen never knocks. It isn’t that Jen’s not polite, she’s just very immediate. It’s very easy to feel like the centre of her world for a few rough seconds at a time; so Josh doesn’t mind.

It’s Liam. “Hullo, Bro-hem,” Josh says in a voice that’s not nearly cool enough to pull off such idiocy. 

Liam has a way of looking him up and down where Josh feels divinely judged. He seems to come to a conclusion, and smiles. “C’mon.”

“I was kinda about to hit the hay, dude?”

Liam tilts his head and it’s convincing enough. “C’mon,” he says again, and Josh grabs his key card, has no pocket to put it in, and trails Liam down the corridor in his Nirvana tee and boxers. 

There’s a sleepover happening in Jennifer’s room that doesn’t involve much sleeping or many clothes. She’s spread out on her bed, the plume of her golden hair all around her like a glimmer, her panties white and her arms across her chest, making ripples in her thin t-shirt. Her ankles and wrists are the slightest parts of her; she’s always looked so strong. 

Josh notices Liam’s shirt is unbuttoned almost to the navel. 

“Happy now?” Liam asks, and Jen flings up her arms, embracing the cool air, and burbles a happy sort of noise. And then he goes to her and slides neatly into her open arms and puts a hand on her bare thigh, like it belongs there, and kisses her. His hair is already disheveled as she nestles her fingers in it; they’re picking this up, not starting afresh. 

Josh shuffles over until he can see the dance of their lips and tongues, wet-pink and stubble and giggles, and then he mumbles, “Uh, I, oh--” and stares at the wooden floor. It’s really uninteresting, because it isn’t making out with anyone.

He’s kissed Jen onscreen, kissed her forehead and her cheeks, European-style, with a when-in-Rome excuse. His physicality with Liam mostly extends to hearty handshakes and back-slapping hugs where Josh’s face naturally slots into the fold of Liam’s neck and shoulder. 

“Josh, dude, the lady wants a crowd, not company,” Liam says, sharply amused.

“Oh, cool,” Josh manages. 

Jen’s arms go up all a-flail again and he goes to her, goes to them both, settles in the space Liam makes against their bodies, Jen’s flyaway hair magnetized to his lips as soon as he sets in. Jen pushes a palm against his jaw, childishly tilts his head towards Liam and Josh sighs out and closes his eyes like he’s apologizing and kisses Liam ever so, ever so softly.

Liam’s not into that shit. He pulls on Josh’s bottom lip with the pad of his thumb, opens him up, kisses him like he kissed Jennifer, with an open mouth and the kind of ownership a young man thinks he has over a girl. He pats the side of Josh’s face when he’s had enough, smiles at him, hands him back over to Jen even as he keeps a few fingers on the nape of Josh’s neck.

“Just so you know,” Jennifer says very seriously, “that made me incredibly horny.”

She kisses a little sloppily, pleasure rather than finesse. Josh wonders if it would be okay to put his hand up her t-shirt, but he can feel she’s not wearing a bra and doesn’t like to presume. She’s a wriggly sort of kisser, brushing her body all up and down his and Liam’s, not a trick learnt from porn-stars and eager-to-please school friends, but because it makes her feel good, makes her whisper little nonsense words and happy sighs against his tender lips.

They stay up until the land of the rising sun lives up to its name, swapping set stories they never all shared. That’s okay, though. They can share them now.

*

The only toothbrush in the ensuite bathroom is Jennifer’s, so Josh squeezes toothpaste onto his finger and makes do. Liam comes in while he’s washing up and puts the toilet seat up with his toes and pees and wanders out again.

If these are the things he has to suffer now, now that they’re a trio and not two pairs, then—

Josh thinks he’ll make do.


End file.
